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Slightly off topic, but Sierra’s AGI games TOTALLY ROCKED in CGA compared to what the competition was doing.
Usually CGA games are limited to displaying only four “colours” on screen at once (the techies among you are free to correct me on this) from a total palette of seven (white, black, turquoise, pink, red, yellow, green. Sierra however used a nifty trick whereby its games had access to the full CGA palette. Meaning all of these colours could be displayed on screen at once, whereas a Lucasarts (or anyone else for that matter) title, when running under CGA, only had access to four colours at a time (and they always had to use one specific combination meaning either black, white, turquoise and pink; or black, yellow, red and green). As an example, compare Maniac Mansion (or what have you) to Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards or any other AGI game (DOSBox has a CGA mode, though I’ve never tested it).
Now, a question: why didn’t Sierra continue using this trick for its SCI games?
To Ken and Roberta, you and your trawler are welcomed here in Florida any time. Do you do much fishing or just sailing? I would love to catch a Marlin but I tend to get sea sick very quickly. My dad loves to fish. He usually stays around Ruskin and fishes for Reds, Flounder and Trout. The Snook and Sheeps Head tend to be harder to catch.
I remember playing a Star Trek game that was similar to the Sierra style. Does anyone know who created the game?
Let me add another thing (I can’t help it…I am passionate about these kinds of discussions). You are correct to say that our system may not be perfect, but for anyone to assume that any system would be perfect is just silly. Any system will have problems. I believe this can be contributed, in part, to the fact that there will always be BAD people in the world. Don’t shrug this off. Unless you are living in Utopia, where everyone is good, honest, and can be trusted, then certain individuals and groups will be taken advantage of, used, extorted, etc…always.
Exactly! I agree with everything you are saying. If anyone is reading this, I encourage them to hold people accountable for claims they make and force them to give viable alternatives and “ways of fixing the problem” before giving credibility to their ideas.
Ken, he actually did offer a solution (see the Remedies section [last one]). Essentially, his idea is to shut down bad business – (equates it to the 3 strikes rule in California). Doesn’t the market naturally do this for us already? You may have bad businesses succeed in the short term, but it is not a good long term strategy. If they do happen to succeed for the long term, I would consider it lucky and rare. Lucky and rare do not seem like good business models.
Thanks for the thoughts.
Greetings Patrick.
Fun article.
Here’s my thought on the issue:
The article paints a picture of the US economy as a few rich people exploiting a country full of starving workers.
Personally I dislike articles that complain about something, but then don’t offer an alternate solution. The article criticizes the “American way” without pointing towards a vision of a country that is doing it better. What does the author see as the correct role model? It is easy to complain about things, but hard to do them better.
I’ve lived in Europe, and I’ve lived in Mexico, and of course I’ve lived in the US. I’ve also visited more than my fair share of countries. I’ve even traveled extensively in places like China. Yes, there are things about America that seem wrong. But that said, as of today, I can’t think of a country which I wish America were more like. This is a great place, and a great system.
I would argue that one indicator of whether or not the article has a basis, would be the US borders. Generally speaking, are people from other countries interested in moving here, or leaving here? Are immigrants who come here quickly disenchanted and rushing to go home, or are they building careers and integrating with society? Is there a huge group of America’s poor fighting to leave the US to reach other countries where they perceive more opportunity for success?
To summarize: The author seems to think our way of doing things is wrong, but never offers an alternative. Our system is not without flaws, and I suspect there are things we can learn from other countries, but overall, I can’t think of another country whose system I think we would be better served by. The article’s author never says it, but I was reading between the lines that he prefers a socialist system or even a communist system. Once again I would say “Give me an example, and let’s look at their economy.”
Argh…. I should know better than to get drawn into political discussion… it’s a lose-lose game.
-Ken W
Ken,
I know you’re a busy man, but I was interested to get your take on ideas put forth by this article:http://www.g-r-e-e-d.com/GREED%20II.htm
I sent the guy a specific argument about one of his points, and although he acknowledged my points as being “good”, I think I was dismissed.
I would be happy to post our argument here, but these discussions are political, and if I remember correctly, aren’t you trying to keep political discussions off of the boards ???
Fun question. The honest answer is that “Sierra was a public company. As CEO of a public company, my responsibility was to the shareholders, and I had to do what I felt was in the best interests of the shareholders.” We received an offer to acquire the company that represented a premium to the price we were trading at of approximately 50%. Also importantly, Walter Forbes, the CEO of the company who acquired us, had a vision to acquire several of Sierra’s competitors and create a “mega-company” which would move Sierra into another plateau, and give it much greater distribution around the world. This meant higher revenues for all of our products, and bigger budgets for our products.
Initially I refused the acquisition offer, believing that Sierra would lose its creative ability to build product if rolled into a conglomerate. To counter my objection, the acquiring company put in place a structure which guaranteed Sierra its independence. There was an agreement that only “non-creative” pieces, such as manufacturing and sales offices would be consolidated, and that I would continue to run all the groups that built product. With the belief that Sierra would “remain Sierra” I agreed to the merger.
What none of us knew at the time was the the company who acquired us did not have pure motives. None of the promises made were kept, and ultimately criminal charges were filed against the company who acquired us. There is still criminal litigation in progress against Walter Forbes. Some members of the management team of the company that acquired have already been convicted.
So .. to answer the question .. It wasn’t the sale that hurt Sierra. What killed Sierra was that it was acquired by criminals. I still believe that based on the information I had at the time, the decision I made was in Sierra’s best interests. Unfortunately, I got scammed.
-Ken W
Quote:
“… (by Todd VDW)
Now, however, I live and work in California and was contemplating taking a weekend trip up north to Oakhurst. I know everything is closed there, but I am wondering if there is anything there worth seeing. I feel a very strong nostalgia for Sierra and I just want to see what’s there.Does anyone know anything about this?
TV…”I visited Oakhurt back when Sierra was in its heyday. My dad and I were passing through on the way back from Yosemite and we went to the office to check it out. Unfortunately the tours were done for the day and we had to move on. I did manage to get the ear of a nice customer service rep who listened to my tale about how all of my Sierra games wouldn’t work on my newfangled VGA display because the disks were only written to use CGA or Tandy/PCjr graphics modes. Trust me you do NOT want to play a Sierra game in CGA. Anyway, she actually shipped me replacements for all of my games. THAT was cool.
But I digress. Is the city worth visiting? Well Oakhurst is a nice, small, remote town. I imagine the only reason it holds up without Sierra is because of the tourists passing through to Yosemite. The home prices out there are kind of ridiculous…right now a decent 1500 sq ft place will probably be $250K+. But then again this is California. I could probably retire there, but I wouldn’t make a special trip just to check it out. If anything, make plans for a guided muleback trip in Yosemite and hit Oakhurst on your way up. Otherwise, if you want to scratch your nostalgia itch, play some of the old school Sierra stuff and if you’ve got any questions, Ken is pretty good about answering inquiries in the Ask Ken section of this board.
The real question here is if you could go back in time and tell Ken not to sell Sierra – would he have listened??
Hi – First post.
The first true computer game I ever played was KQ4. A neighborhood kids dad brought a copy that he borrowed from a coworker home. Even though the graphics are hoakey (sp?) by todays standards, I immediatly began to imagine myself in Rosellas place walking from the fishermans house, or cleaning the 7 dwarves house. yes thats weird, but it’s true. A bit later my dad brought home our first PC “IBM Compatible (WOOHOO)” and he took me to babbages to buy a game or two. I bought KQ4 from the bargain rack and (I think) Police Quest or maybe Monkey Island. My Dad bought Leisure Suit Larry in the “pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals”
Of course the first day he was very stern and adamant that this PC was a tool and wouldn’t be used for mindless games… that lasted on day 😀
Anyway, I followed Sierra, specifically through KQ, LSL, and QFG. I do remember getting in trouble quite a few times for either spending too much time on the game or these strange 900 numbers appearing on the phone bill from Sierra Online game support (the whale trick was bogus, shame on you ) 😀
Anyway, my roots start in the commodore but Sierra kept my gamer fire burning into the early 90s.
So yeah, anyway, I’m a computer tech now.
Sierra forever!
Lucasarts games forever!And there I’ve finished Phantasmagoria 2 🙂
The game is good until that alien dimension thingie, I don’t like that too much. I prefer the first game BY FAR! I guess it was just missing the Roberta touch 🙂Anyway, I hope you haven’t forgotten about this.. I have all the time in the world, but perhaps you could post just so I know that the thread isn’t dead?
Thanks!
What I would do is find out what INTERP.TXT is and where it is. If you find it, move it into where your saved games are stored or maybe where the game is installed.
Do you have the SWAT game installed?? because if you do can you Copy the second disc on your hard drive and Send me the folder that you put it into.. to copy a disc on your hard drive put the disc in your cd rom drive and open my computer, then rightclick the drive and click on explore, make sure you create a new folder on your desktop. highlight all the files and drag them to the folder.. my email is killer_man_murder@yahoo.com or mkuehl06@hotmail.com i check both often.. if you have any questions feel free to email me.. Thanks for all your help
After I installed the game it created an apllication file (looks like a crown kinda like the icon for Kings Quest V). I have tried opening the saved games from inside the game and just cicking in the file listed as the saved game it always come up with the same message.
omg I had a similar problem – whenever I’d go to the maid’s cart, It would give me an error, I clicked OK and it came up again. I kept clicking it away. I think I used VDMS. I forget what error it was.
Try looking at Al Lowe’s website:
http://www.allowe.com/Larry/troubleshooting.htm You might need to change some things in the Resource.win file. (??) Sorry, I wish I could be more help, it’s been a while since I played it.
The photo shoot was a bit much? Even for those days? It was great of Sierra to publish Softporn Adventure and it was a great cover too. But I agree about Levy. A serious reader will notice though that Levy interprets and judges everything from what he calls “Hackers Ethics”. So Ken was sometimes more or less pictured as a “bad guy”, because he wanted to earn money too (LOL!). I never understood why 1/3 of the book (!) was about the early days of Sierra, for he fails to make it clear that Ken was really a hacker in the sense he uses the term. But the factual descriptions – if true – were great to read.
WOW! I was at TJ MaxX, and a few years ago, I had seen Manhunter: New York, btu didnt think anythign of it. Then, recently I’ve been getting into old games, and kicked myself for not buying it. Went back today, and it was there! I quickly got it!! Its so nice to hold an old relic of the past in my hands. Only 5 BUCKS! To think, it’s been sitting there for 17 years!
In it was two floppies, the ‘official manhunter field map’ of new york, ‘official manhunter field guide’, a mail-in survey, and an ‘if you have problems’ card. The box has seen better days, but its all entact, everythings there. The box is in OK shape, but minus all that, you can see everything clearly, no rips, just ware.
Am I missing anything? And oh yeah, saw somwhere a pic of the contents and the field guide had a black cover! mine is just plain white. Why is this?
